Mauro’s work unites Pop aesthetics with social comment, addressing some of the most pressing and difficult issues in today’s society in a way that is subtle and accessible, without being trite, shocking or obscure. Mauro is an artist connected; he sees the bigger picture and world affairs and his finger on the pulse of contemporary society.
Mauro lives in London with his wife PR Director Lorena Perucchetti.

The Melinda and Bill Gates foundation recently
asked Mauro to produce a special commission
artwork for their cause Art of Saving A Life

PRESS RELEASE

THE U.S. MESS: MAURO PERUCCHETTI
AND AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL
By Peter Frank

Mauro Perucchetti’s preoccupation with the paraphernalia of Pop – or,
perhaps more accurately, the Pop-ization of paraphernalia – ultimately
must alight upon the United States of America. This country, after all, is
the original, purest, and most consistent source of Pop artifacture and
Pop sensibility.

Actually, make that lower-case “pop”; the capitalized version of the label
speaks of an art movement, and, while American Pop Art made a
profound and lasting impact on artistic practice around the world, it did
not represent the American soul. The work of Warhol, Lichtenstein, et
al, arguably found American social discourse as foreign as did its English
and Continental counterparts; it looked at pop-culture phenomena with
the same longing, ecstatic confusion, and eros-tinged sense of mystery
that motivated the Europeans, even while surrounded by the stuff.
American Pop, and European, made “art” out of that which was trying
so hard not to be art.

The Italian-born, London-based Perucchetti addresses America the
Popular from the same partly-estranged vantage as his Pop forebears,
American and non-American alike. But these days, everyone – everyone
– is less estranged from popular culture than anyone was fifty years ago.
The globe-girdling dominance of American culture and society is
complete, after all. Abetted by social media and the World Wide Web,
unimpeded by opposing nations or cultures (which now rely on
America’s existence for their own anti-American potency), Americulture
is world culture. America’s tastes are the world’s tastes (even if you can
get wine at McDonald’s in some countries). America’s problems are the
world’s problems.

This is the premise on which Perucchetti’s collection of objects aimed
at American peccadilloes is based. Part of his “Hip Pop Art” series,
these delirious elaborations on American gun culture, police aggression,
patriotic mythology, and money worship manifest less a scolding tone
than one of awe. A sense of incredulity filters through these over-thetop,
delicious fabrications; the patterns of repetition that characterize
so many of them seem like mantras on material things. The parodic tone
that inflects these grotesque transformations of ordinary objects into
menacing tropes may begin pointedly, but gets blunted by the sadness,
nervous exhaustion, and even nostalgia that hover around them. These
reimagined, reformulated, repurposed objects, no matter how benign
any particular one might seem, project power – and, even more, project
the tristesse of power and the anguish of America’s unique task: it seeks
to rule the world while increasingly unable to rule itself.

Why doesn’t Perucchetti pick on some other benighted country? Lord
knows, the world is full of them. But none engulfs the entire earth with
itself as the United States does. When China takes over, Perucchetti will
doubtless skewer the resurgent Middle Kingdom with doting satire. In
the meantime, he takes aim at America – an immense target, to be sure,
but able to swallow most arrows aimed at it. Indeed, these sculptures
do not mock the country, they mock – and at the same time marvel at
– various behaviors and presumptions that make modern – or, if you
would, post-modern – America what it is nowadays.

“Don’t Mess With The U.S.,” Mauro Perucchetti’s ultimate object in this
group – and the name of the group itself – announces. Far from echoing
the defiant cry of the American jingo, the declaration provides a yet more
dire and forlorn warning: the U.S. is messing with itself, and it doesn’t
need your help.